Nebraska Ethanol Plant Decarbonizing by Capturing CO2 and Transporting to Underground Storage

Agricultural and food processing firm ADM has started operations on its new carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at its Nebraska Corn Processing Complex.

ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland) operates an ethanol production plant at the Nebraska facility in Columbus. The captured CO2 will be transported there to Tallgrass’s Trailblazer pipeline for permanent storage deep underground in eastern Wyoming.

The Trailblazer pipeline, formerly a 400-mile natural gas transmission line, runs through Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, and can transport more than 10 million tons of CO2 per year, which is the equivalent of removing more than 2 million passenger vehicles from the roads, or approximately 25% of all registered motor vehicles in the three states combined.

Tallgrass also constructed a lateral line connecting ADM’s facility to the pipeline system using only voluntary easements from landowners as part of the project.

“ADM has been a pioneer in the CCS industry for more than a decade and this is an expansion of that expertise,” said Chris Cuddy, president, North America at ADM. “CCS is an important part of our strategy to decarbonize our operations and help meet global demand for low-carbon ingredients.”

ADM says the ethanol carbon capture system is the largest in the world. Ethanol refined from corn and other bio feedstocks are used in blending with gasoline at varying percentages.

U.S. ethanol production achieved a record of 16.22 billion gallons in 2024, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Yet ethanol and other biofuels can produce greenhouse gas emissions. Other biofuel producers developing carbon capture and storage projects includes Green Plains, which recently started operations at its own CCS facility in York, Nebraska.

Green Plains also uses CCS to deliver biogenic CO2 to the Tallgrass Trailblazer pipeline for permanent sequestration. Green Plains also plans to bring other CCS systems online at its Central City and Wood River facilities in Nebraska by the end of the year.